Matt Sanchez of VideoEgg came and spoke this morning to the SEMI program--a group of young college students interested in finance and business that I run.

He said something that stuck with me... that there are two types of knowledge:  experiential knowledge and intuitive knowledge, and that entreprenuers are successful when they have the latter.  Basically, those who can only see and understand something if they've seen it before are going to struggle in a startup, whereas those who can hypothesis and logic out systems of behavior that are completely new will achieve much. 

I think often times, people take a very passive approach to intuition--imagining that you either have it or you don't, but I don't think that's true.  "Gut feelings" often come quicker to some people than others, but a lot of times, putting in some solid effort into thinking from the other side of the table or in someone else's shoes has the same effect.  Sometimes, you get good enough at that where it seems to come automatically, but that takes time.   A good "gut feeling" can come from a well thought out attept to figure out what you would do if you were someone else.   Intuition isn't a gift of luck... it is the result of mental training... a mode of thought.

Yeah, so we definitely had a blip on the grid just now.  91 degrees a few minutes before midnight and poof... my computer restarted and the streetlight went out.

Astoria II?   Damn... I better start eating the cheese in my fridge now.

Then how do I know you're a real person?

Funny how the internet changes our perception about who we are and what makes us real.  If I can't find "bits", I don't always trust that there is flesh to match. 

When you work for an internet company that is mostly staffed with Israelis, you wind up with stuff like this in your inbox:


Hebrew Word of the Day - Mur'al

Mur·al (pronounced as written)

1. slang
2. deriving from the word “poison”
3. Used to describe someone who identifies with and who is deeply associated with a certain goal or mission; for example, many time used to describe a young soldier in the IDF J.
4. Use in sentence: “Wow, that Charlie sure is mur’al. He keeps coming to work with avatar t-shirts.”    

I noticed an interesting phenomenon the other day.  The amount you communicate is
proportionate to the number of different avenues you have for communication.  Right now, I can:

-email
-IM
-Skype
-blog
-text
-phone
-MySpace mail
-MySpace comment
-tag something in del.icio.us for: someone
-poke in the Facebook
-write on a Facebook wall
-email in Facebook
-Flickr mail
-Flickr comment
-Gchat in Gmail

...and I'm sure I'm forgetting some...  Oh yeah..talk in person.

The interesting thing to me is that new forms of communication don't necessarily replace the other.  I comment on Flickr to people whose email addresses I have.  Its not just getting the message across from point a to point b..its the way in which it was sent...the packaging.  Packaging allows expression through an infinately more diverse set of variables, like context, media, volume (degree of publicness).  An avatar message to someone on a blog post is a very different message than a text from one person to another, even if the worlds are the same.

Having all of these means of communication available allows for very nuanced interaction with the world.  Some people I will never get on the phone with...others I only talk on the phone to.  When I got texts, I didn't call less...  I called differently.  Less short phone calls....but then I had more longer ones because texting kept more relationships fresher in a more efficient way...  So I just had exposure to more stuff that warrented a call because I had a little bit of texting
to fill the quiet times.

Hopefully, social networks, wireless carriers, Web 2.0 companies realize that and keep their communication as open as possible.  The model for many web applications, like dating, used to be "pay to contact this person".  Instead of standing on the way of communication, I think the best strategy is to encourage as much commuication as possible.  These services don't own my ability to communicate, and there's lots of competition.  Keeping the room silient isn't  the best way to create a party.

Sometimes, we feel like we have more control over the past than the future.

Weird, no?  Because its already happened.

But the past is somewhat maliable...   its all about perception.

"No, I didn't really mean it that way."

"That's not what I said."

"But you never saw the other thing that happened right before that..."

"You must be mistaken."

In a culture of stories--our own recollections of the past versus hardcoded truth, sweeping over tracks in the sand seems so easy.  Memories are so tenuous and open to interpretation, that we seem to spend more of our time trying to change the past or imagine what would happen if we did (because we know exactly what we things we need to change to make our lives better) than we actually spend trying to change our future.  And yet, the fact of the matter is that the future is unwritten--completely wide open--and the past can't changed.

We could all use a little more work on the future.  Where are you going versus where you think you could have been...   

Yesterday's trip to Skirmish with ZogSports was a blast, and I have the markings to prove it:

"Do you think you serve your country best by being a critic and using words that tend to enflame and overshadow any information?"

This one comes from YouTube (which, by the way, I find myself watching more and more lately).   

Well, actually, it comes from a Hardball interview with Ann Coulter , but I saw the clip on YouTube.  Chris Matthews went to the audience for a question and the first young woman with a question posed the question to Coulter.

I have to admit that I'm not a particularly political person and I certainly don't follow all the talking heads (at least the non-animated ones), so this may be the first time I've ever seen/noticed Ann Coulter speak.  Is she really this wretchedly awful all the time?  I really dislike anyone who just spews division and polarizes people wherever they go.  Like this young woman pointed out, Ann, you're just not helping.  This country needs more people who bridge gaps and bring people together... not make everything out to be black and white, right or wrong.  And the personal attacks? 

I mean, seriously, where does she come off saying that Bill Clinton is gay?  Is that relevent to any conversation whatsoever?  That would be like someone insinuating that Ms. Coulter is just bitter because she's undersexed... it's totally unrelated and drags someone's personal life into the conversation unecessarily.

Besides, its obvious that her statements and divisive and enflamatory behavior are likely traced to either one of two causes...    her own ignorance or her allegiance to the Almighty Dollar.  It might be both.  Ignorance sells a lot of books.                

Helping Dad put together a vanity for their bathroom, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

No instructions in the box... Wonder where these extra screws go...

From Jay Rand...

"When I'm playing on my own mental turf, my batting average at home is very high."

I guess you don't get booed at home, then, like the more neurotic among us do.

Getting feedback from your user community is really important, but, of course, your community isn't necessarily building your product.  There are lines to be drawn, right?  You can't have the inmates run the asylum...

...or can you?

That's a little bit how I feel now.  I feel like I'm the customer.  What would make my product fun for me and my friends?  What would make me want to use it?  What's in it for me?

I can't say enough about being a user when you're building, but not how you might think.  Like just the other day, I started a Photobucket account.  The things that I thought were important... like an uploader and tagging...   not in there at all.  But yet, its just as popular as Flickr.  I didn't find the UI intuitive at all, but then again, I'm not every user. 

Being a user means you see what's out there and play with it, and instead of passing judgement, you try and understand why something is popular.  You match feature sets to usage and popularity.  Its the difference between being a pet owner and a zooalogist.  You don't have to love the stuff... just understand it and learn from it.  Of course, you build up a passion for it, and that's important, but pet owners don't always know the most about their pets, because they don't study their pets.  They interact with them and build emotional relationships with them.  Zooalogists try not to start with that and try to keep it "professional" so that you can take a stop back now and then  I've had to remind myself to do that and to keep an open mind as to what works and what doesn't, lest I overdose on my own Kool Aid.

Every office I work at must have a bird, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Makiko saved this little guy from the street. He can't fly yet.

Mmm... Birthday sugar... rrrrggggggg, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

So far, this is the best present I got today. :)

Del Frisco's, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

I think this is our favorite...

One thing I've noticed about myself...     within a given setting, whether it was school or a job or where I lived, I'm pretty resistant and uneffected by stress.  Nothing really bothers me much.

But that's when I'm pretty anchored into my surroundings--where I know the avenues for dealing with stress causes and can manage, avoid, reschedule, etc.  When I'm playing on my own mental turf, my batting average at home is very high.

Through me into a completely new surrounding and change the rules, and I have to say, I get a bit mentally unraveled.  I'm still able to complete all my tasks, but adjustment gives me quite a bit to deal with.  When I started working at my last two jobs, or when I moved, the same thing happened.  For a couple of weeks, I just tried to keep the deck chairs from sliding off the ship.

So if I'm a little slow with e-mail or on the blog, bear with me here.  I'm only on week two.

That being said, the people at Oddcast are great, and I can't wait for the momentum to build further on what we're working on, because then I'll be working directly with a lot more people within the organization.   We had a fun company outing on Friday and everyone was very warm and welcoming.   

Its very different working on independent projects when you're in a group of 10 or 4, but 38 people is the largest group I've worked with in quite a long time.  GM was 150, but I didn't work directly with most of those people.

In any case, I'm learning a lot about my own style of project work...    I really like the process of speccing something out.  Taking something enormous and breaking it down to its composite parts is something I'm good at and enjoy.  And, as it turns out, I'm not bad with designing screenshots either!

More details and observations to come...

I'm working on a project that will enable internet users to explore, express, and aggregate their identity on the web, and have fun doing it.

On the other side of the world, people are working on a project to blow up people who are trying to blow them up, because of religious, cultural, and national identity.  It is not fun for anyone.   

I have a friend who is struggling right now with her identity in terms of how she relates to others.  Who does she want to be with?  Who can she be herself with?  You can't tell someone how to be themselves.  They need to figure it out on their own.  The only thing you can do is remind them that they shouldn't be anyone to anybody but who they want to be, and focus on people who accept them for who they are.  Oh, and then, don't forget to accept them for who they are.

At Union Square, they're trying to identify a candidate that will be a good fit for the team...  On one side they're trying to figure out what the profile of that person is, and on the other, there are some young people out there thinking about whether they would be a fit for that position. 

But really, what does it all matter, unless you have a Facebook account.  And, today, through the magic of being a faculty member, you can finally Facebook me!  Fordham doesn't have alumni e-mail addresses (why, I have no idea... its just a simple forwarding thing)... so getting an account has proven difficult.  However, now that I actually teach there, I legitimately got a profile.  What amazes me is that its really a lot like Friendster, but what keeps it strong and useful is the offline relevency.  When you can write what dorm and room you're in, you can know who's in your hallway before you even move in.  I don't think any social network will ever get more relevent than that, unless someone builds Apartmentster for NYC and people agree to list where they live.  I'm not sure I see that happening.

MySpace is experiencing some... well...  technical difficulties.  (Like total loss of power at their only datacenter.)  The site was almost unusable all weekend and completely down yesterday.  So what are all these kids doing to do in the meantime?

1. Like, um, shop.

2. Watch videos of live action recreations of Goldeneye for Playstation.

3. Make friends with someone from the Philippines.... check out Friendster.

4. Go outside and play...   hahahahahahahaha    j/k!  Outside...ha! 

5. Write a letter of appreciation to Tom...  but write it using cut out letters from all different magazines.  Oh.. and maybe make it about something besides appreciation, too... 

6. Stand in the place where you are.  Think about direction.  Wonder why you haven't before.

7. Go see Clerks II!!   Seriously, it might even be funnier than the first one.

8. Ask your parents a really uncomfortable question about sex.  This works even better the older you are.

9. Break out into total chaos.  Create false idols of MySpace on hilltops...   like a giant golden thong.  Loot.

10.  Write some really profound messages on the sidewalk in chalk...  like...   "This is written in chalk."   Makes you think, doesn't it?

So, after a very busy week one at Oddcast, I've started thinking about how I'll be using everything I've learned about the web...    Because if I haven't actually learned anything in the past couple of years, then I've been wasting both our times.

So, here's what I think I've learned that I need to focus on applying:

1.  The three P's.  Product.  Product.  Product.   

2.  There is no "best" UI, there is only the "right" UI.  Example:  There is no AJAX in MySpace or Craigslist.

3. I will not stop thinking about new features, because nobody likes a dead product.

4. I will maintain and active and open dialogue with my userbase and potential userbase.

5.  I should listen to the people who aren't using my product maybe even more than the people who are using my product.

6.  The more tools in the hands of the user, the more they will build the experience themselves.

7.  Products need more offline relevence... a connection to someone I know... something I can do online that affects someone else in the real world... 

8. Give people more ways to communicate and they will communicate more, not just differently.

9. We have only touched the surface so far and most of the "rules" are unwritten, so I should not be afraid to do something completely new.

10. No one likes to be sold to.

After stopping at my parents on the way back from the Met game, I noticed the sky as I was parking, so I walked down to Shore Road today and snapped off a few pics...